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The tech companies scanning your face while you shop
(www.telegraph.co.uk)
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this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2023
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Privacy
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I know this is a privacy sub but I say bring it on, I'm tired of people shoplifting and thinking it's ok. Food is one thing but I was in the cosmetics aisle at Walmart a few days ago and counted at least 7 security tags that had been ripped off of press on nails. If you are lifting food, formula, diapers, that's one thing but if you aren't doing it to survive then fuck you for making everything more expensive for the rest of us.
What are you on about? The entire capitalist system is based on theft from the workers. To even be a capitalist means you gave someone less than the value they produced during the time they worked.
If they didn't want us taking back what's rightfully ours then they shouldn't have stolen from us in the first place.
Why do people keep defending the parasites?
You're incredibly naive if you think stealing from our corporate overlords will force change in any significant way other than driving consumer cost up as they socialize their losses.
There's right and wrong. Stealing is wrong. It doesn't take a genius to figure this out.
If you really cared about the workers you wouldn't steal their products.
Don’t engage with this person, you will lose the argument because nothing you say will convince them. Stop worrying about rich corpos getting rinsed and start worrying about policy that would address the cause of crimes like these.
‘Never argue with an idiot. They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.’ - Mark Twain.
Of course theft is bad, but is eroding privacy the necessary evil to solve the problem?
In the US (I couldn't find UK numbers but don't know where to look), the National Retail Federation's 2022 security report did find external theft is the biggest cause of shrink at 37% while theft of inventory by employees and loss of inventory by corporate mismanagement adding up to 54%. ^[1]^ If companies are losing more inventory through their own mismanagement than they are from people coming into the store and stealing, should this technology be the priority?
Really, if anything is the take away from the report (this is probably more US specific and not as applicable in the UK), it's that there has been an increase in violence and aggression in their stores over the last couple years. With regards to the always running facial recognition, I don't see how that will make a significant impact of violence and organized retail crime.
Obviously retail in the UK is going to be different, but this technology seems to be best suited for non-violent shoplifters, and that might not actually be a whole lot in the grand scheme of things, especially to warrant draconian measures.
^[1]^ https://cdn.nrf.com/sites/default/files/2022-09/National%20Retail%20Security%20Survey%20Organized%20Retail%20Crime%202022.pdf
What are you tired of? People stealing from faceless corporations that destabilize countries (Chiquita), let their employees die over profits (Amazon), treat their employees like slave labour (McDonals), and on and on.
You’re tired of people stealing from them? What are your values exactly? Bend over and let the companies write your laws so you can feel good at night hitting your pillow knowing that Bob across the street got locked up for not reporting his second car? That will teach him!
Buddy. You need to do some serious thinking about your priorities in life.
I was with you until you said McDonald's. Everyone I've known who worked there said it was a good gig
No one who actually worked there would say this.
Well you're wrong. I've known lots of people who have worked there and it has a reputation of being one of the better FF places to work. Maybe it's different in America...
You're pretty ruled up and into heavy exaggeration territory at this point.
If you are stealing to survive its much more realistic to focus on higher value products you can resell for cash than to try stealing the specific things you need. It's both more efficient and less likely to get you caught.
You could be a pedophile and therefore you don’t deserve privacy. Please post in this thread your address, phone number, and all your passwords. I’m waiting.
I agree.
Also DA who don’t prosecute petty theft.
I have no idea who would downvote you or why.
Theft creates conditions that encourage the publicizing of personal data. It is an anti-pattern to privacy.
Pfft! Like they wouldn't find some other pretense if theft wasn't a thing.
They don't collect this data because of shoplifters, that's a convenient excuse. They collect this data because it is useful to them from a marketing perspective. To know who is looking at what products like they might be interested, mixed with demographic information. Companies go nuts for this kind of data.
That’s not how marketing works. People don’t sell you things you want, they try to sell you things you don’t want. That is what makes it so ahitty.
Skilled marketers try to identify the needs of the consumers that use their products so they can offer even more relevant products and find opportunities to upsell. Ideally, they try to create positive brand impressions with their marketing touchpoints, only reaching out with information that is timely and relevant. Bad marketers just play the numbers game by spamming inboxes and throwing everything against the wall until something sticks.
100% data driven marketing is not about reaching people who are or will be consuming, it is reaching people who aren’t => selling things to people who don’t want to be sold. Keeping sold is a diff matter.
That’s what makes this big data so discouraging, if I look at a beer, it is more likely marketing teams will try to reach me on lateral data topics (would you like a gym membership?) that have nothing to do with beer vs “hey here’s a coupon for 5% off”.
That is not how marketing for a retail store works at all! They'd put themselves out of business by pulling that shit.
They want to gauge what you are interested in for a number of reasons:
purchasing frequency. Do people who buy this product tend to do so as a repeat purchase or as one-off purchases? If you know this you can adjust discounts to pull in more people that would otherwise make this purchase at a different store.
purchasing correlation. So you've bought a new Xbox. What else do you want to buy alongside it? Games and controllers of course! There are a ton of other, less obvious correlated purchases out there, and this is great information for bundling promotions.
attention span: does this product actually get people's attention? Seems pretty obvious why they want this data.
does said attention translate into purchases? If not, why not? Might be an ideal target for a targeted survey later. Can be used to justify replacing a product on store shelves.
customer metrics: provides accurate information about the activity going on in the store, what times are the busiest, which times are the lull hours, and accurate headcounts for number of customers.
Why are the things I want on the top or bottom shelf and the things I don’t want on end caps or the middle of the shelf?
Impulse purchases. You're there looking for a thing that brings you to an area, put something tangentially related in easy view nearby. It's the same sort of thing as why there are single serve candy and soda at the checkout 'cheap, easy, convinient' on items that will generally have high margin to them.
Maybe / maybe not
Companies pay to place their product that may or may not sell, c/o inventory discount.
Remember, in a perfect world, advertising to someone who will neither purchase more nor less is wasted advertising.
Marketing is not about what you want, but influencing you to do things that you aren’t doing already, or to keep you doing something you are about to stop.